Israeli students win prestigious international prize

The “iGEM BGU” team, belonging to the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba, achieved an unusually resounding success, winning first place at the prestigious international competition iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) 2015 held in Boston.

About 24 students from various educational institutions from dozens of countries took part in competitions held in the USA from 28 to 4600 in September. Israeli representatives won in the category dedicated to health, and ranked with Cambridge, Harvard and Bologna universities, ahead of representatives from many international institutions of higher education.

As part of the competition, the Israelis presented the development of an innovative “Boomerang” system, based on genetic engineering and necessary for destroying a tumor or marking to identify the edges of a tumor for the purpose of its complete surgical removal.

The international student competition International Genetically Engineered Machine has been held by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2004. Its goal is to answer a fundamental natural science question: “Can simple biological systems be constructed from standard, interchangeable parts, or are living systems too complex to be constructed in this way?”

While Israelis are leading in the category dedicated to health, Belarusians show themselves to be professionals in programming. Gennady Korotkevich won on Google Code Jam, Facebook Hacker Cup, “Yandex. Algorithm; three times won the International Olympiad in Informatics, twice - the International Student Olympiad in Programming.